I sighed. “Yes, it’s me.” I avoided meeting Han Sung-hyuk’s electric eyes. “And it looks like it’s you, too.”

  He sighed too, with considerably more frustration, and ran his hand through his hair as he surveyed our surroundings.

  “If you’re looking for someone else to romance, give it up,” I snapped. “I’m it.”

  “There’s still that Striking Red Crane person.”

  “Who is, as far as I know, a man. Now I don’t know and I don’t care if you’re into men, but –”

  “I’M NOT!”

  How fascinating. This was the most emotion I’d seen out of this jerk. “That sounds like a guilty conscience.”

  “Fuck…”

  “I could say the same thing,” I snapped back. “We’re supposed to be acting as lovers in this scenario and you’ve given me no reason to be enthusiastic about it.”

  He glared at me. “Don’t you want to pass this scenario?”

  “One of my friends just died horribly in front of me, and I don’t know whether that means dead-dead or just game-dead. Now I’m stuck in a scenario with an arsehole who relies on his looks and a potential psychopath who might have murdered another of my friends, so excuse me for –”

  “The fuck do you mean?” Han Sung-hyuk interrupted quietly. “Murdered your friend? Are you talking about this Striking Red Crane person?”

  “You’ve got the Kill Feed now, don’t you?” I asked quietly.

  To his credit, without another word, Han Sung-hyuk fiddled about in the air before him, evidently checking the Kill Feed window.

  “His username was Dr_Uchiha.”

  Again, to his credit, he twitched but said nothing.

  “It could have been an accident,” I continued, as he silently scrolled, “but I already know… Well, he comes across as a nice guy, but he’s a liar.”

  Han Sung-hyuk continued to stare into empty space.

  “Can’t find it?”

  “No, I found it.” He fiddled with the black beaded bracelet on his wrist.

  “Can we… come up with a plan?” I said at last, when he continued to play with the bracelet in silence. “I have no idea what role Red will play, but I don’t trust him. Do you know this story?”

  “Of course. It’s Korean.”

  If this man scoffs at me one more time, I’m going to smack him with Divine Wrath.

  “So are you going to explain the story to me?”

  He scowled and began to recite as though he were doing me a grand favour, “Dude sees the daughter of a kisaeng, falls in love –”

  “What’s a kisaeng?”

  “An… entertainer, I guess.”

  “Like… a sex worker?”

  Han Sung-hyuk chose to ignore my question and continued, “He has to go off and take some official’s exam or something but promises he’ll come back and marry the girl. In the meantime, some other official – oh yeah, the main dude is the son of the town official or something – takes the dad’s place while they’re gone to do this exam. He decides he wants the girl too, but since she says no, he throws her in prison. The first guy comes back, finds out what happened, gets her out of prison, they live happily ever after, the end.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “Why do I feel like you’ve missed out a tonne of details?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “The difficulty level for this scenario is hard. There’s no way that’s all there is to it.”

  Poppy… No. No.

  “Maybe Red plays your father.”

  Again, no response. I stopped swinging and considered Han Sung-hyuk more closely.

  As I’d thought before, his avatar was excessively handsome. He had a popular ‘small’ face, pointed chin, and long legs. Surrounded by sweet-smelling grass, a light wind ruffling his clothing as he gazed seriously into the distance, he looked like a fictional hero, too good to be true.

  With his gaze elsewhere, I surreptitiously checked his information again.

  Of course, Gabriel’s Ring had upgraded. So now I could see some kind of… emotional state?

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  I looked from the information in front of me to the man standing nearby. His expression was cold and aloof.

  ‘Agitated’?

  “Hey,” I said, “what are you worried about?”

  “Me? Worried?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Excuse me for asking after your wellbeing.”

  “We’re here to get through this scenario, and get out. Not to be friends.”

  I jumped off the swing, marched up to him, and held out a hand. “If that’s the case, my first task is that you give me a token of affection. So hand it over.”

  He glared down at me.

  “What, is your first task to play hard to get?”

  “I have nothing to give you.”

  “Turn out your inventory and we’ll see if that’s true.”

  He opened his mouth, presumably to retort, but closed it again without saying anything and began to walk away.

  “Uh… Hello? Have you forgotten what you need to do already?”

  “I told you, I have nothing.”

  “Then just give me some of your hair or something.” He turned to look at me with an expression of disgust and I snarled back at him, “I don’t want it either! But if you say you’ve got nothing, then the only thing left is hair or some clothing… something!”

  If I still had my dagger, I would have risked trying to cut some strands off, but without it, I found myself simply shouting ineffectually at him.

  What if… What if I just continued to annoy him?

  I was half out of my head with exhaustion and anger. I wanted to fight God, if I ever met Him at the end of this game, but Han Sung-hyuk would have to do for now.

  He must have noticed my expression because he held out a hand and an object materialised in it.

  An umbrella.

  Or more like the remains of one.

  It was a folding pocket umbrella in teal, a colour I disliked, with some of the spokes protruding from the fabric. I looked at it, and looked at Han Sung-hyuk.

  “…Seriously?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t what, you… Okay, surprise me. What does it do?”

  He shrugged.

  “So you don’t know.”

  “Do you want it or not?”

  “Do you make it a habit to carry around trash?”

  I could sense his temptation to bash me over the head with it.

  “No one is going to believe this is a sign of affection.”

  “Just take it.”

  If there was a time to use Divine Wrath, it was now. I took a deep breath, walked the few steps between us, and took the umbrella.

  Fuck you, game. Fuck you and your tasks.

  “It worked.” There was a smug ring to Han Sung-hyuk’s voice.

  I hit him with the umbrella.

  It didn’t do any damage, of course, but his blue eyes widened.

  Was… Was that all it took to shock him? It made me feel a little better.

  “Well I’m headed home,” I said, my voice sickly sweet. “See you later, honey.”

  I marched away across the grass, examining the umbrella as I went.

  Enlightening.

  There was nothing else. All I held in my hands was a battered old umbrella.

  And yet those boxes made me wonder, because in previous scenarios, I had seen them before in the final scorecard for each stage. ‘Clue to…’ and then a string of boxes.

  Now I was holding one of these weird items in my hands, and I couldn’t understand it.

  Was this a bug? If we were inside the game, in its Beta form, that would make sense.

  I shivered suddenly, hoping that these bugs stayed fairly innocuous and didn’t turn into an unbeatable boss or a looping glitch that had me trapped in a scenario forever.

  “Seong-ah! What a lovely umbrella you have there.” An old woman sweeping the step in front of her house paused to massage her back and call out to me. “Where did you get it?”

  ‘Lovely’? I assumed that this item looked different to NPCs, much the way that they couldn’t see the players’ avatars. “Oh, this was a present,” I replied, trying to look shy about it. It felt stupid.

  “Lovely, lovely… Oh, did you hear that the magistrate is leaving for Hanyang? He has a new position there, I hear. He and his wife and son will be leaving in a few days. His replacement arrived this morning. Quite a young man. Quite young, quite young…”

  The woman continued to ramble, but my brain had stalled on the phrase ‘Quite a young man.’

  A young man.

  In the previous scenarios, none of the plays had been antagonists, per se. Poppy… Poppy had been the stepsister, yes, but that didn’t necessarily mean she had to work against everyone else.

  Although she had.

  Was Red playing the bad guy, this time?

  I couldn’t even ask the old lady what he looked like; she would only see the character and not his avatar.

  After I managed to prise myself out of her rambling monologue, I kept walking with no sense of direction, brain scrambling.

  Poppy…

  For fuck’s sake, Mik Tsaam. Pull yourself together.

  Poppy had changed the storyline in the previous scenario. Was that why the completion rate was 85% that time? A new plot had unlocked…

  Perhaps…

  I stopped in the middle of the dirt path, staring at a trail of ants without seeing them.

  If Red was the new magistrate…

  He wanted the main character…

  What would happen to the plot if I chose him and not Han Sung-hyuk?

  No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than I smacked my free hand with the umbrella, my teeth clacking together against the pain.

  What the fuck? Why would you even think that?

  I would rather pick an arrogant jerk over a murderous lunatic any day.

  What if it was an accident, though? What if he didn’t mean to kill Rohan?

  What if it wasn’t?

  Suddenly, I felt exposed. A quiet village and charming countryside stretched out around me, and I felt as though at any moment something would burst out and claim me.

  I opened the umbrella and cowered under its pathetic protection.

  My head swam.

  Is this what it feels like to faint?

  No, I wouldn’t faint. I breathed deep until my ribs hurt and held the breath until the air exploded out of my lungs and I was forced to gasp. The dizziness hadn’t fully subsided, but I was still upright.

  And that meant I had to do something.

  I sat on one of the low stone walls, as if I were catching my breath, and glanced behind me at the white walls, grey roof tiles, and wooden sliding doors. There was a lake nearby, hazily reflecting the stonework, and the cherry trees that cast a gentle rain of pink petals continuously.

  A bird sang from one of the manicured pine trees nearby.

  How beautiful.

  I couldn’t go in. The daughter of an entertainer wouldn’t be allowed into such a place. I had to casually loiter outside and hope I wasn’t moved on.

  The chatter of people within the walls of the building complex grew louder. It seemed that a group was walking towards the front gate. I gripped the handle of the umbrella, willing myself to calm down. If I lost my head, I could lose my life.

  A group of men in deep blue, round-collared robes were making their way through the gate. A young man walked in the middle of them, apparently the centre of the conversation. His eyes drifted lazily across the outdoor scene before him, sharpening as they fell on me. Hastily, he bowed to the other men, and said something I couldn’t hear, before hurrying down the stone steps away from them. Towards me.

  “Maria? Wow, did you come to find me?”

  I took one more deep breath and turned to the young man bounding without any dignity towards me, a big smile on his face.

  “Hello, Red.”